Bambu Digital Agency

Digital Marketing Agency

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Our Story

August 2016Olly and Alex, our two co-founders, first met while working at WPP media agency MEC as part of the team helping to transition the prestigious EE Telecoms account from MEC to Maxus, another of WPP’s agencies. Olly worked as a specialist in digital ad channels, while Alex was responsible for full-channel media planning.

June 2017 – As part of a global restructure at WPP to consolidate their agency network, Olly and Alex both moved together to Essence, WPP’s digital specialist agency, and continued working closely together on a number of accounts.

Oliver Springate

Oliver Springate

Head of Strategy

Alex Kaplan

Alex Kaplan

Head of Client Services

January 2018 – Olly made the decision to leave his role at Essence, to work as a freelancer helping SMEs to accelerate their marketing.

December 2018 – Alex, our other co-founder, also decided to leave Essence to be able to spend more time with his parents who were living in Thailand.

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January 2019 – In a quiet pub called the Lore of the Land on Conway Street in Fitzrovia, London, Alex and Olly both met up with some old colleagues and got chatting about the potential of bringing their skillsets together to help their new clients, and the idea of Bambu was born, although at this point it didn’t have a name.

Over the course of the next few months, regular meetings in various co-working spaces across London gradually moved our founders closer to setting up Bambu. The name was chosen from a long list of potential options that all signified growth, with the bamboo tree being the fastest growing plant, and the unusual spelling was chosen as it’s commonly written that way in Asia, where we would be partly based, as well as to help stand out.

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September 2019 – This is when we had our first breakthrough came, when the newly founded Bambu signed their first client; a startup interior design company who needed help with building a new website and launching their ad campaigns.

January 2020 – Alex made the move to Bangkok, where he began setting up our operations in Asia, with the plan to split his time between the UK and Thailand.

February 2020 – Shortly after relocating to Bangkok, Alex took what was planned to be a short trip to Manila to visit old friends and speak to potential clients. The trip was originally planned to just be 2 weeks…

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We all know what came next. Covid hit and a major global shutdown meant that Alex was stranded in the Philippines. Back in London, by pure coincidence the paperwork for Bambu’s registration as an official company was rubber stamped on March 23rd, the exact same day that the UK first went into lockdown. It’s fair to say that this was not a great start!

However, what seemed like bad luck turned out to be a much more positive. By adapting quickly to the growing demand for support from e-commerce startups, and hiring some fantastic technical talent in Manila, Bambu was able to successfully navigate a very tricky first year, and by early 2021 we had a team of 6 and were working with 20 clients based in the UK, USA, Philippines and Hong Kong.

Alex never looked back and now lives full time in Manila, working closely with our APAC clients and overseeing our technical team, while Olly continues to live in London managing our UK and US clients and overseeing our strategy team. We have maintained the structure that we stumbled upon during 2020, and having two bases has enabled us to service our clients much better than we ever expected, mixing local strategic knowledge with highly experienced technical skills and close to 24 hour coverage thanks to working in two timezones, all packaged in a way that is commercially viable for the growing businesses of today, as they work towards becoming the market leaders of tomorrow.

Who we work with

What Our Client Say About Us

Working with Bambu increases our creativity. They give us data-driven insights at the start of a campaign. During…
Etnika
Etnika
etnika.co.uk
What I love about working with Bambu is the open communication and active collaboration I have experienced with…
Sunnies Studios
Sunnies Studios
ph.sunniesstudios.com
Thanks to Bambu's hard work we've now got less than 8% of clients considered at risk and the…
Black House Marketing
Blackhouse
blackhousemarketing.ca
Ecommerce is evolving quickly and getting more and more competitively cut-throat by the minute so it really pays…
Wine Deport
Wine Depot
winedepot.com.ph
The partnership with Bambu was the thing we needed to experience the complete solution for our business needs,…
Engoo
Engoo
ngoo.com
Bambu have always been very informative, quick to react and always had our best interests at heart. As…
Glass & Wick Limited:
Glass & Wick
glassandwick.com
I've tried so many other agencies to get the most value from them but Bambu always get the…
Handsome Dans LTD
Handsom Dans
handsomedans.co.uk
Bambu have been great to work with over the last year, very efficient with building our Facebook and…
Hattingley Valley
Hattingley Valley Wines
hattingleyvalley.com
Openreach
Hattingley Valley
Accor
Fashion Eyeware
Alma De Ace
Atherton Bikes
Sunnies Studios
Sunnies Face
Aboitiz
Ayala
SM Supermalls